Who's Got What at Master Paintings Week?

Colin Gleadell looks at next week’s Master Paintings Week designed to feature the wares of London’s Old Master dealers during the auction house sales. Johnny Van Haeften is one of the organizers of the event and his goals are higher than making a few sales:

Virtually every gallery has one new discovery or another, and is determined to break the fusty and rather snooty image of the Old Master gallery. “I think people will be surprised at just how fascinating and vibrant they can be,” says van Haeften.

Philip Mould, for instance, presents some of his Gainsborough discoveries in an exhibition devoted to the artist’s early work. Whitfield Fine Art, in a new gallery in Dering Street, has a newly attributed portrait by van Dyck that may have belonged to Charles I. In his first-floor gallery in Duke Street, Michael Tollemache displays a jolly scene of a 17th-century village festival, below, by David Teniers the Second, that he discovered belonged to Prince Alexander Besborodko, Catherine the Great’s chancellor, and may have even passed to her. Such discoveries enhance the value of the art, and this work will be priced at “over £1million”, says Tollemache.